On the basis of extensive global data sets the total amounts of internal, potential, latent, and kinetic energy in the world oceans and atmosphere are estimated and compared for annual mean and seasonal conditions. Next, and expression for the available gravitational potential energy in the oceans is derived. The computed amounts of zonal mean and transient eddy available potential energy and the amount of kinetic energy present in the oceans are found to be much smaller (at least 1 order of magnitude) than those in the atmosphere. Because of the sparseness of directly measured subsurface values, the estimates of the kinetic energy and the transient eddy available potential energy were obtained by extrapolation from the corresponding values measured at the ocean surface. The fact that relatively large density variations are found only in the upper few hundred meters of the oceans and the greater stability of the oceans are the basic reasons for the generally small values of the potential and kinetic energy in the oceans compared with those in the atmosphere. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1989